Kosovo Liberation Army

Follow BIRN's reporters for the latest developments as the war crimes trial of Kosovo's ex-president Hashim Thaci and three other former leaders of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army begins in The Hague.

"We refuse to have our history distorted," one protester said when he took loud speaker in his hand to address the protest.

Tahir Citaku made a trip of more than 700 kilometres from the Swiss city of Basel to The Hague to protest against the trial.

 Tahir Citaku. Photo: BIRN.

Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and his three co-defendants went on trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers on Monday morning, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed between at least March 1998 and September 1999 in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania during and just after the war with Serbian forces.

"President Thaci and these gentlemen were freedom fighters trying to liberate Kosovo from a terrible situation that they were suffering for decades from the Serb regime and during the course of this trial we are going to demonstrate that," Kehoe said.

Sejdi Zymeri's house in the village of Likovc/Likovac is close to where the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA used to have its headquarters in the Drenica region, the guerrillas' wartime heartland.

Four witnesses testified in the war crimes trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army member Pjeter Shala, known by the nom de guerre 'Commander Wolf', at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague this week, accusing him of torture.

The first witness in the war crimes trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army member Pjeter Shala, known by the nom de guerre 'Commander Wolf', testified on Monday that his father was tortured by Shala personally at a KLA detention site at the Kukes Metal Factory in Albania in 1999.

BELGRADE - The head of the Serbian parliamentary committee on Kosovo-Metohija Milovan Drecun met with French MEP Jean-Lin Lacapelle on Friday.

Drecun noted that Serbia would never recognise the false state of Kosovo, regardless of evident political pressure and manipulation, the Serbian parliament said in a statement.

Serbian officials held commemorations on Friday in memory of the civilians who were killed during NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, a military intervention that ended the Kosovo war.

The order for the attack was issued by Javier Solana, the Secretary General of NATO at the time, to the then commander of the allied forces, US General Wesley Clark, although there was no UN Security Council approval. It was an obvious precedent.